Titan’s Brood II

When I began work on this novel in January, its primary story lines involved corruption in college football and a man’s effort to save his dying wife. Those ideas still have prominent places in Titan’s Brood, but the genetic revolution–the amazing (some would say frightening) advances in gene manipulation arising from the mapping of the human genome–is now front and center in the book.

Gene therapy to cure disease is becoming commonplace, though there are still critics who decry human interference with God and/or Nature. Preventing disease, especially in unborn children, is still controversial. And then there’s genetic engineering–manipulating genes to change human characteristics in the born and unborn–which is more controversial still. It’s no longer science fiction, and the race is on (drug protocols, patents pending, that sort of thing) to cash in on it. Power, fame, money–all the things men have coveted since the beginning–are at stake. It’s not a question of if, despite the objections from non-secular segments of society, it’s a question of when.

Because genetics necessarily involves existential issues, it’s a rich field for the writer to plow. Life–and how it should be lived–and death–and how and when it should occur–are universal themes. A regime that alters how we live and die provides a nearly infinite number of questions that should be asked. Titan’s Brood, currently at 55,000 words, asks some of them.

It’s not unusual for things to change while the writing, even the editing, is going on. To one degree or another, all four of my previously published novels are not what they started out to be, I have changed the Works in Progress page on this website to reflect the different focus of Titan’s Brood, and you can Read an excerpt here.